Staring at Walls
by wanderingraincloud
Summary: Staring at walls in the aftermath of the Miniature Killer's arrest, Sara and Sofia have some truths to admit to themselves, and maybe to each other.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own or represent CSI in any way. The characters, and the setting are not mine, and I am not exploiting them for financial gain. I promise to put the toys back where I found them!

Warning: This work potentially contains examples of same-sex affection/relationships. If this is a problem, read no further.

Thanks,

WRC

**Staring at Walls, 1: Sara**

Once, when she was a child, she'd gone to school with a broken wrist. When the teacher had realised why she couldn't write, they'd sent her to hospital, and she'd sat in a small room with a doctor and stared at the wall. She hadn't been scared. That doctor had been the first person to treat her with kindness since her father had stopped Grandma coming round. He had a soft voice, and gentle hands, but he asked too many questions. She wasn't allowed to talk to strangers; and her parents had told her that doctors, and police officers, were the worst kind of strangers; so she couldn't answer. She didn't even look at him, just stared at the wall.

There'd been a picture on that wall; a Mediterranean sea scape. It was still the clearest part of her memory from that day - little wonder given how long she'd spent focused on it, trying to block everything else out. She could remember being fascinated by the colours of it. The dazzling white of the small buildings, the golden sand, and the calm green-tinged sea; It was so different to the turbulent grey ocean she lived by, and the mist that hung over it. Like a different world. One where there were no hospital visits, no screaming parents, or beer bottles smashing against the walls, and no beaten, silent children. There was just peace; and a blue sky, so clear, and deep, and bright that it almost hurt to look at it. She'd thought that she'd never see that colour in reality. Until she'd looked into _her_ eyes.

As an adult Sara Sidle had looked into Sofia Curtis's eyes and she'd seen all the things she couldn't have. There was hope, and warmth, and passion, and a promise of shelter in those beautiful eyes; and because Sara had always thought she couldn't have those things, she turned away from it all. She'd convinced herself that the world could be explained by logic and science, and had fallen into something with a man who believed it was true.

It was fine, for the most part. Calm and ordered, hidden away from everyone else, like he insisted they had to be. When she was feeling playful, or snarky, or just plain spoiling for a fight Sofia was still there, at arms reach. Her needs were met with a wry smile and a quick mind, sometimes even a gentle brush of fingers as files were passed between them, and afterwards she could melt back into her not-quite-life with Grissom. So what if it wasn't exactly what she wanted; she was content. It was OK. She just needed to avoid Sofia's eyes in those odd, quiet moments; and stop herself getting distracted by the seductive roll of the blonde's hips as she swaggered across a crime scene.

She managed to live like that for nearly three years; not quite happy, but better off than she'd been before. Then it fell apart. After being abducted and left to die in the desert, she'd found herself back in hospital, staring at a wall. There was no picture this time, so instead she thought about eyes the colour of an Agean sky, and the woman they belonged to. A woman who had, apparently, disappeared.

Sara knew that Sofia had been there when she was found. She could remember hearing the strain in her voice as she radioed for help, and feeling cool elegant fingers against her own before they lifted her into the chopper. Then nothing. Grissom, and the paramedics, had whisked her away to safety, leaving the detective far behind them. She never visited.

Every time Sara saw a flash of blonde hair, or heard a soft lilt in someone's voice, she hoped. She longed to run her hands through that hair, to spend hours listening to that lilt, just trying to work out where it came from. It always turned out to be some nurse, or another patient's visitor; and every time it happened she got more disappointed. After a while even Grissom noticed. When he asked about her mood, though, she just shrugged her good shoulder and blamed it on the medication. He accepted her explanation without question, and went on telling her about the lab. She just tuned him out, like she'd learned to do with Sofia's crime-scene-babbling, and stared at the wall some more.


	2. Chapter 2

Many thanks to everyone whom checked out the first chapter, your interest has kept me writing.

Disclaimers and warnings are the same as for the first part.

**Staring at Walls 2: Brass**

Brass dropped the papers onto his desk and sighed. He should have expected something after the last few days, Sara's abduction had hit them all hard, but some how this had still managed to surprise him. It was a transfer request. Filled out in elegantly precise handwriting, it was asking him to move his best detective to the narcotics division. A month ago she'd refused to even consider such a thing, but now it seemed she couldn't go fast enough. Something was wrong here, and he didn't want to look at the form, let alone sign it until he knew what it was.

Leaving the offensive document where it fell for a moment, he studied the woman who'd handed it to him. She looked much as she always did; stance confident, dark pants and light, pin-striped shirt both immaculate, blonde hair soft and perfectly straight as she stared past him at the wall behind his desk. Nobody else would have noticed there was anything wrong. He doubted anybody else would have cared enough to look, either. People thought well of Sofia; she was beautiful, and kind, and a good cop, but she didn't really let people in enough to actually be liked. For all her boldness and swagger, she was a little like Sara in that regard. Both of them were lone wolves; fierce, independent, keeping as much of themselves hidden as possible. Brass had known them both for a long time though, and he could tell Sofia was hurting. The tension around her eyes and the slight stiffness across her shoulders betrayed her now as easily as her tears had the first time he'd met her, just over fifteen years ago, and he wondered if there was a similar cause.

Then, she'd nearly flattened him as she smashed through the doors of her mother's office on the first day of spring break in her senior year of college. Her hand had been wrapped tightly around that of another young woman, and she was crying even as she shouted defiantly over her shoulder that she was getting the rest of her stuff and wouldn't be back until the Captain had dragged her 'delusional Victorian sensibilities into the nineties and learned to accept reality'. He'd been shocked when he worked out what was going on, but concerned enough to follow the strangely articulate whirlwind out into the parking lot to make sure she was OK. They'd ended up having a cigarette, and an only faintly nasty bottle of Bud Light leaning against her old GMC truck, while she'd introduced him to her girlfriend, and clued him in on what he could expect from her mother on the job. He'd had a soft spot for 'Sofie' ever since.

He'd seen the way she was with Sara. The teasing way she flirted with the other woman was difficult to miss when you knew what you were looking at, even when it was hidden under layers of sarcastic banter. He'd been pretty sure Sara returned her interest, as well. Greg and Sofia were the only people he'd ever seen Sara be playful with, but she never let Greg stand so close to her for long, and never watched him leave with longing, flame-filled eyes.

When the truth had come out about Sara and Grissom during the hunt for Natalie Davies, Brass had been surprised to say the least. God only knew what Sofia had been feeling; sidelined and helpless while someone you cared for struggled for their life God-knows-where, not even able to hold them when it was over because there was someone else – one of your own friends- suddenly in the way. It had to have been hell. Someone else might have broken down, but Sofie had always been too strong for her own good. She'd done her job with same hard-edged determination she always showed on a difficult case, and only taken the same couple of personal days as the rest of them when it ended. The whole thing had to have effected her more than she'd let on, but he never thought this would be the result when she finally let herself react.

Shaking his head slightly, he returned his attention to the form. She'd cited only professional considerations under 'reasons for transfer', but he knew that was bullshit. She was leaving over a woman. Again. As far as he knew, she'd only spoken a few sentences to her mother in the decade and a half since the last time she'd done it. He'd be damned if she'd do the same to him.

"You don't have to do this," He told her

At first he wasn't sure if he'd heard him, but after a few more moments studying whatever she found so fascinating on his damn wall today, she finally shifted her gaze onto him and asked "Do what?"

"Run away,"

That got an immediate response.

"I'm not!" she snapped, and he could tell from the sharp, defensive note in her voice that she didn't believe it any more than he did.

"Really?"

"Narco is a good opportunity," She argued, more convincing this time, since she wasn't actually lying right to his face this time. Narcotics was a good opportunity for someone with her skills at the moment. "They've just got funding for their own lab, there's an opening for a new Lieutenant, and they're looking for someone with CSI experience. Arildsen is only a few months off retirement, and Owens has already got as far as he's going. I could make captain by next year."

All this was true, which was why she should have applied for the transfer when it became common knowledge last month. Brass had put her in for the Lieutenants' exam at the time, and suggested she go for it. She'd passed with some of the best results he'd seen, but she'd been reluctant to move away from Homicide; or Sara.

He couldn't really block the request when it had been his idea to start with. He might not be happy with her reasons for going, but he wasn't that much of a hypocrite. It wouldn't stop him calling her on the real reason she wanted out now, though. "Are you sure this is what you want?" he asked, "There are probably other ways you could avoid seeing them,"

"It isn't about Sara,"

He noticed that she didn't deny having a problem with Grissom, but let that slide. He had something else in mind. "You should go see her,"

"I can't," she sighed, running her fingers through her long hair before going back to staring at that one picture on the wall. It was of Brass shaking hands with one of the city's volunteer firefighters outside the CSI building. He was smiling, more easily than she'd seen him do for a while now. He looked younger because of it, and far more care-free. Like they'd all been before this mess with the Miniature Killer had started; before it had got personal, and they'd all worked out what was really going on, and ended up fighting for one of their lives. The life that mattered most to her. And to someone else. "It wouldn't be right,"

"Because you like her?"

She nodded, acknowledging her feelings to someone else for the first time "Far too much for it to end well for all of us,"

"You should still go," he smiled "Take her some flowers, tell her how you feel,"

"What about-

"Grissom? You're not a coward, Sofia, let Sara make that decision."

She sighed, but tilted her head to the side and gave him that twisted little smile he was now so familiar with. "Okay," she reluctantly agreed, "But if it backfires horribly, I'm blaming you!"

"You'll do fine," His smile growing into a grin, like the one he was wearing in the picture. He liked Grissom, but he and Sara were too alike to work. They'd drown under a sea of quantifiable facts, and failure would only be harder on them both a few months down the line.

Still caught between horror and optimism at what she was about to do, Sofia only nodded "I hope you're right,"

"So do I," he held up the papers, "And I'll have these signed by the time you get back if you like,"

"Please," Sofia's gaze narrowed, and she regarded him for a few seconds with suspicion in her lazer blue eyes, "Would you have signed it if I hadn't agreed to see Sara?"

"Perhaps," Brass shrugged, "I guess you'll never know,"

When she left, Brass was smiling at the transfer request in his hands.


	3. Chapter 3

I still don't own CSI or represent anyone involved in its making.

Warning: Contains invented back-story for a character without any, references to a non-Sassy F/F relationship, and a distinct lack of Holiday Cheer, considering that it's still just about Christmas day where I am.

As always, I'd love to hear what you think.

**Staring at Walls 3: Sofia**

She hated hospitals. The old ones clung to you with their shadows and their scruffy paint, smothering any hope you clung to under cloying antiseptic and murmured secrets. The new ones were stark, and brutal; glass panels and painfully white walls revealing and reflecting the desperate truth of what was happening, with no chance to hide from the suffering, and no possibility of understanding it either. She'd spent far too many hours in both. Sometimes she'd been a patient, but usually she just waited while someone else's life was lost, or broken, or changed forever.

The first time she'd been only four years old. A nurse had lead her father and her into a small, softly lit room with a few beige chairs and some battered toys in one corner, and they'd waited together for news of her mother. Her father hadn't been able to speak, but the way his usually so gentle hand had gripped hers tight enough to leave bruises told her enough. Scared, she'd crawled into his lap and wrapped her free arm around him, crying silently into his shirt and straining to make out his heartbeat for reassurance while he stared unresponsively at the yellow walls. Hours later a doctor told them that he hasn't been able to save the baby brother who should have been born in three months' time, and that she'd never have any siblings. Her father had broken down, so it had been Sofia who'd found the strength to ask if they could see her mother yet.

Five years later, another hospital, but the same beige chairs, and this time there was no reassuring heartbeat. It had been damaged by a knife when her father had stepped in to protect one of his students from her abusive crack-head boyfriend. There was nothing the surgeon could do, he'd told them, exhausted and still wearing blood-stained scrubs after two and a half hours of trying. Only Sofia and her mother had gone home that night. The next day they'd gone to a shooting range, where Sergeant Curtis had put her pistol in her daughter's hands and taught her how to use it. They didn't talk about what had happened.

Then there had been Jessica. Her sweet, joyful Jess, who'd had chestnut curls, and warm arms, and shining, gold-flecked hazel eyes until it was all taken away. They'd met at an off-campus café her first winter at Stanford when Sofia's fingers, numb from too long running in a California downpour, had fumbled the door into the other girl's full hands, and showered them both in hot coffee. She'd been mortified, but Jess had just laughed in that completely disarming way she'd had, and told Sofia that she could buy her a muffin to make up for it. A muffin had turned into lunch; trips to the coast; pizza; movies; falling onto the couch to make fumbling, inexperienced love together for the first time. They were still together eight years later when Jess was diagnosed with leukaemia.

Sofia had spent all the hours she could sitting beside her partner, sometimes rolling straight out of the squad car into the hospital. For months she read to her when she was bored, and held her when she needed comfort. On good days they laughed together, trying to figure out the mess of abstract art that hung on the wall opposite Jess's bed. On bad days Sofia brushed back what remained of her lover's hair, and stroked her back while she vomited. Every time she'd phoned Jess's parents to tell them, they'd slammed the phone down before she had chance, so she did it alone. The doctors told them not to give up, that they were trying everything they could to help her fight, but one night when she'd slipped away to cry while Jess slept, she'd heard the whispered 'insurance doesn't cover that', and had wanted to hurt them for their lies. Instead she'd screamed and put her fist through that damn picture. Exhausted by treatment that sometimes took more out of her than the disease, Jess hadn't even stirred. The next day they finally moved her to a tiny private room, and Sofia knew it was over. Every day for the next week, she brought Jess flowers, and forced herself to smile while she tangled their fingers together, and watched the light fade a little more from her lover's eyes. Two days after Jess died she'd been told they'd given her spot as detective to someone with less comp' time on their record, and she was being 'volunteered' to CSI. She couldn't have cared less; the most important thing in her life was already gone.

No one she loved ever left hospital whole. Even without the hundreds of victims she'd comforted, photographed, and interviewed within its sterile walls, her feelings about Desert Palms Hospital were justified. Yet here she was, her stomach clenching tighter with every clip of her boots across the sanitised linoleum, braving an institution she hated to confess feelings she shouldn't be having. Loosing Jess like that had almost broken her completely. Afterwards, once the pain had fallen away and left a dull, aching emptiness where her heart used to be, she hadn't been able to face another loss like that. She was better off alone; falling in love again would only hurt her more in the end, so she'd just stopped feeling. She'd thrown herself into her new job as a way to cope, and forced her body to be satisfied with meaningless one night stands when the longing for Jess's warmth beside her at night got too much. Ecklie had been more than happy to let her carry his caseload as well as her own, especially when she proved to have some talent for the work, and he got to take the credit as her supervisor. Some weeks she put in twice her scheduled hours, but as long as Day-shift's solve rate kept climbing he didn't care. It didn't matter that one of his team was becoming little more than an efficient shadow. She'd convinced herself that she could live without human contact, and he let her do it. Then, sometime after the shake-up, Sara Sidle had smiled at her.

The case had been bizarre to say the least, and her colleague unusually forthcoming, and she'd fallen into her old pattern of sarcastic banter and gentle mockery without thinking. Then came the smile. It lit up the other woman's whole face, turning her eyes golden as they danced in mirth, and instead of seeing Jess in the heartbreakingly familiar expression, Sofia had longed for Sara. It took a while to realise what the feeling was after so long, but after months of seeking her out in the labs and watching her at crime scenes, Sofia knew. Somehow Sara had got to her. As much as she didn't want to, she was falling in love again, and she blamed Bruce Eiger. Damn him for screwing with people's lives when his own was over! Still, loving someone, and letting them into your life were two different things, and she'd been determined not to let the other woman know how she felt.

Until now. Looking down at the flowers in her hand, Sofia allowed herself an ironic smirk and a deep breath, then pushed through the door to Sara's Hospital room.

TBC


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: This has been a long time coming, but I think my muse got misdirected when I changed planes! I can only apologise, and hope that some of you are still interested enough in the story to read it. Many thanks to my kind reviewers from the last few chapters; your words helped me find the determination to keep going, even though the process proved tortureous (or however you spell that damned word!).

Warnings and Disclaimers stay the same, but just incase anyone needs a recap:

**I do not own anything to do with CSI or the characters portrayed in this piece of fiction. I'm not making any money. **

**Contains non-graphic F/F. **

Thanks, WRC.

**Sara**

It was hot. That was the first thing Sara noticed as she struggled to wake up. It was too hot, and dark, and she was wet, and exhausted despite her sleep. Like she was drowning again. Not under a pickup in a desert this time, but in a vast tropical ocean. She could move, and feel, and call out, but there was nothing to grasp, and no one to hear, and she was just waiting until she sank. Where ever she was, it had become a sick metaphor for her life. It was inevitable that, just like her life, this place would eventually kill her. It didn't matter. She took a last deep breath and let herself slip under.

Chilled hands caught her, but they didn't belong to death. They moved with too much compassion for that; four trails of gentle ice trailing up and down her arm while another fine-boned hand gripped her own with surprising strength. There was sound too, a steady mechanical chime, and a lilting murmur too low for her to catch more than the occasional soft exhale of her name. Someone was with her. Someone whom cared enough to stay with her and hold her in the world, physically if necessary. Someone who wasn't Grissom. He'd never held her so long, or so tenderly without a reason beyond their mutual comfort, and the skin that danced against her own was to smooth to be his. Or any other man's.

That was a thought that thrilled her as much as it terrified her, because despite the slow slide of grudging respect into friends-of-a-kind the years of working together had brought, she couldn't imagine Catherine touching her without warning, or clear permission, and certainly never like this. She shouldn't even hope for the alternative. She'd pushed Sofia away too often, and too viciously, for her to come to her now, no matter how much Sara wanted these hands to be hers. Maybe one of the nurses had a little too much empathy and not enough idea of professional boundaries. Either way, she had to know for sure, so like any good scientist searching for angels she prepared herself for disappointment; then opened her eyes.

What she saw stole her breath.

**Sofia**

The doors swung closed behind her, and everything was quiet. There were no screaming alarms, or panicking nurses this time, and no one to drag her outside and force her to wait until it was too late. There was only her own exhaled breath when nothing went wrong, the slowing hammer of her heart, and the crinkle of cellophane wrapped flowers in nervous fingers. And then there was Sara.

Once her eyes had fastened on Sara; pale, but very much alive in the dim night time lighting, she could think of nothing else. She saw every rise and fall of the other woman's chest, noticed every flutter of her lidded eyes; even the twitch of her fingers, and the way she frowned before she shifted in her sleep were spotted and remembered – But she had no idea she was moving towards the bed before she got there. She was vaguely aware of her vision blurring, but she didn't know it was because of her own tears. When Sara stilled completely, she reached out a hand to comfort her without conscious intent. Sofia simply registered the moist heat of the skin against hers, and gave a soft squeeze before dipping her fingers into the nearby jug of cold water and stroking up the length of an exposed arm. It was something she'd done for Jess a hundred times to coax her through fever, and maybe her body remembered the motions from years ago, but it was only Sara she thought of comforting now. Sara's was the name she whispered in a soothing voice, and it was her feelings for Sara that the soft words confessed without her knowledge or consent. She was in love.

She was so very much in love with Sara. A fact that could only end in heartbreak, but one she couldn't hide any longer, even from herself. She could only hope, despite all the evidence stacked against the possibility, that it wasn't her heart that was broken.

Maybe Sara; who'd always watched her supervisor and guarded his affection jealously even before they'd started their not-quite-secret affair, and been loved by him so intensely that even a complete stranger had noticed, and who had never shown interest in another woman; would decide to throw it all away to be with Sofia. She doubted it, but she couldn't stop hoping, selfishly, that it was Grissom's world that was torn apart instead of hers. And she hated herself for it. But not enough to stop.

**Sara**

She saw her angel when she opened her eyes, but she was broken. Her shining blonde hair was dull and tangled. Wingless shoulders shook under creased cotton while silent tears burned down her too-pale face.

"Sofia?" Sara asked, but she was too quiet to be heard over whatever the other woman was torturing herself with, and Sofia just kept staring, unfocused, at their entwined fingers.

"Sofia?" she tried again, squeezing the hand that held hers.

This time there was a reaction. A gasp, a jolt, and the hand squeezed back. Red rimmed eyes, still the beautiful blue she'd dreamed of, locked into hers, and a raspy voice choked out her name. "Sara,"

If there had been any doubt before, there was none now. The untouchable detective had been crying.

"Are you OK?"

"No," Sofia answered, as straightforward in her grief as she was in everything else, "But I will be."

"What happened?"

"You almost died." Sofia's free hand went to her face, and wiped aggressively at the evidence of her tears; but the other clung to Sara, as if she needed reassurance that the other woman was there, even as she spoke to her.

"You didn't have a pulse when we found you. We were almost too late," She took another shakey breath, "Then Grissom was in the chopper with you, taking you away from me, and it hurt like hell, even though I knew it was better like that,"

"Why?" Sara needed to know.

"It's like I'm cursed," she whispered. "Because every time I see someone I love in hospital something bad happens,"

Sara shook her head, "No, why did it hu…" the she realised what Sofia had said, and her eyes went wide in shock. "You love me?"

Sofia sighed in defeat, finally letting Sara's hand drop from her own, but looking straight into her disbelieving brown eyes as she answered simply, "Yes, I think I do,"

"Oh. Well," It was the sound of a scientist processing a variable she didn't understand. A bad habit she'd picked up from Grissom, and one that served her about as well now as it always had him.

The woman who was offering her everything she'd thought she couldn't have thought it was a brush-off. "It's OK, Sara. I don't expect anything from you; I know you're with Gill. And I'm transferring to Narcotics, so you won't even have to see me if you have a prob-

Sofia's rambling was cut mercifully short by a warm hand on her arm.

"I don't love Grissom," Sara told her, quiet, but decisive, "And it's not a problem." She was done hiding from the things she wanted.

"Really?"

"Really." Sara's tone remained firm, but there was a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth as she continued, "Although there might _be_ a problem if you don't lean down here and kiss me becau-

And it was Sara's turn to be cut off. The lips on hers were softer than she'd imagined them, but they were real. Sofia kissed her with a gentle reverence that stole her breath, like she was the most precious thing in the detective's world, and Sara knew the first moment their tongues met that she would never get enough.

**END**


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